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Nuclear cooperation agreements signed with UAE and Turkey
While touring Middle East countries, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was
present at the signing of nuclear cooperation agreements between the
Japanese government and the UAE (May 2) and Turkey (May 3). In the
Joint Declaration on the Establishment of Strategic Partnership, PM Abe
and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey “Expressed their
satisfaction with the signing of the ‘Agreement between the Government
of Japan and the Government of the Republic of Turkey for Co-operation
in the Use of Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Purposes’ and the ‘Agreement
between the Government of Japan and the Government of the Republic of
Turkey on Co-operation for Development of Nuclear Power Plants and the
Nuclear Power Industry in the Republic of Turkey’, and the granting of
the exclusive right of negotiations to Japan regarding the construction
of the Sinop Nuclear Power Plant. They also affirmed their hope that
the negotiations will lead to establishing a new avenue of co-operation
in the field of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
In talks between PM Abe and Crown Prince Salman bin
Abdul Aziz Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia on April 30, agreement was reached
on the consideration of concluding a nuclear cooperation agreement
between the two countries.
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TEPCO exchanges plutonium with German power company
On April 23, TEPCO announced that it had agreed to exchange, through
amendments to balance sheets, a part, 434 kg, of the 2.5 tons of
plutonium that it owns in France for the same amount of plutonium held
by a German power company in the UK. With the decommissioning of
Fukushima Daiichi NPP Unit 3, TEPCO no longer has any use for either
MOX fuel now being processed or plutonium, while the German company
finds itself unable to process MOX fuel due to the closure of a
processing factory in the UK, and thus the two sides found themselves
with matching interests. The German side will now process the MOX fuel
in France, and TEPCO will have a part of the plutonium stored in France
now stored in the UK.
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US-ROK civilian nuclear cooperation agreement to be extended for two years
The US-Republic of
Korea (ROK) civilian nuclear cooperation agreement was signed in
November 1972 and came into force in March 1973. At the time, it was to
be valid for 30 years, but this was extended to 41 years when an
amended agreement was signed in May 1974. This agreement is due to
expire in March 2014. The two countries have been negotiating a renewal
since October 2010, but have been unable to reach a compromise. On
April 24, it was announced that agreement had been reached on a
two-year extension.
The renewal negotiations stalled because the ROK
side is demanding a comprehensive agreement on uranium enrichment and
the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. An ROK government official has
been reported as stating that the ROK sense of rivalry has been
stimulated by the fact that “Japan is allowed to do these.”
The reprocessing method that the ROK is attempting
to introduce is a dry form of reprocessing known as pyroprocessing, in
which the oxidized spent nuclear fuel is reduced to metals, from which
the fission products are then separated by electrolysis. The ROK side
is claiming that since the minor actinides are not separated from the
plutonium when it is extracted, this method is more proliferation
resistant. The US side, however, does not acknowledge that the method
is more proliferation resistant and maintains that both reprocessing
and enrichment contravene the 1992 Joint Declaration on the
Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Having for the time being extended the validity of
the agreement, the two countries will now continue negotiations every
three months.
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MOX fuel for Takahama Unit 3 departs from France
On April 17, 20 MOX fuel assemblies for the Kansai Electric Power
Company (KEPCO) Takahama NPP Unit 3 were loaded onto two specialized
UK-registered ships (the Pacific Heron and Pacific Egret) and began
their journey from the French manufacturer to Japan. The two ships are
armed and the idea is that they will escort each other. The ships will
round the Cape of Good Hope and take the southwest Pacific route,
apparently due to arrive at Takahama NPP’s private port in late June.
The consignment was supposed to have been shipped in
the spring of 2011, but was postponed due to the Fukushima Daiichi NPP
accident. Takahama Unit 3 has been shut down since February 2012, but
KEPCO is reportedly planning to apply to the Nuclear Regulation
Authority to restart the reactor as early as July this year. However,
loading of the MOX fuel is not yet scheduled.
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Order suspends Monju operation
On May 30, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) ordered the
suspension of preparations for a restart of trial operation of Japan
Atomic Energy Agency’s (JAEA) prototype fast breeder reactor, Monju,
due to failure to carry out roughly 10,000 inspections within the
facility, and the ensuing sloppy response. With the exception, for
example, of checks necessary for maintaining security, activities
connected with pre-operation work, including an exchange of fuel, are
suspended. The suspension will be enforced until the NRA has completed
its assessment of the report on the implementation of improvements
related to the suspension order. A major reason for the NRA issuing
this very severe order is that not only the non-inspection of equipment
and time between inspections were unilaterally altered without taking
necessary procedures, even after the submission of a flawed report on
the situation no new measures were taken. JAEA president Atsuyuki
Suzuki announced his resignation on May 17.
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Rat stops spent fuel pool cooling system
On March 18 at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, a rat
somehow gained entry to an outdoor electrical junction box, resulting
in a loss of power when it caused a short by touching a terminal. The
spent fuel pools of Units 1, 2, and 3 (now undergoing decommissioning
due to the March 2011 accident) and the common fuel pool could not be
cooled from between 19 and a half to 29 hours. On April 5, while
installing a steel mesh fence as a countermeasure, a wire from the
steel mesh came into contact with a terminal in the junction box,
causing another short and making the cooling for Unit 3 spent fuel pool
inoperable for three hours. Furthermore, on April 22, two dead rats
were found inside an outdoor transformer, causing the Unit 2 spent fuel
cooling to be suspended for 4 hours while the rats were removed and the
transformer inspected.
Photo of the corpse of the rat that stopped the spent fuel pool cooling system (TEPCO)
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